How Breathe Life is Changing the Life Insurance Industry
I’m Ian Jeffrey and I’ve been involved in launching and scaling businesses for over 20 years. Just over a year ago, I teamed up with my 3 co-founders, Arach, Jean-Nicholas & Sebastien, and started working on an ambitious new idea which would become Breathe Life. The four of us were all passionate about building a real business that solved a real problem and most importantly that had an impact on people’s lives.
You may think the insurance industry isn’t the most exciting of spaces, but when done right, insurance products are very powerful. We’d all seen first hand, in one way or another, how critical life insurance can be to one’s financial health. We also knew the life insurance industry hadn’t changed all that much since its inception about 100 years ago, and thus how much modernization it needed. The four of us saw a massive opportunity to bring a radical shift and improvements to this world and decided we were going to be the ones to create this change. We are building technology that will bring financial security to all people, whoever and wherever they are.
So how exactly are we going about doing this?
The Breathe Life software is a set of consumer-centric digital solutions that empower insurance experts to distribute their products using modern day technology. Why is this important? Well, two of the biggest issues in the industry right now are the cost of distributing insurance products and the disconnect between the customer’s expectations and the reality of the process. One of many very specific consequences of these is the huge gap in insuring the middle market. These are people between the ages of 25 and 64 who have an annual income between $35,000 and $125,000. You might think, that’s such a huge chunk of people, how can that many be underinsured?! Well, the insurance industry is largely still a pen and paper space where winning clients is slow, applications are lengthy and policy issuing takes time. But consumers today expect experiences that are tailored to them and their needs and can be purchased in real-time.
That’s where Breathe Life comes in.
By transforming the distribution of life insurance from pen & paper to digital, consumers can purchase products on their own from the comfort of their home, and financial advisors can move faster and reach new audiences by using our software solution. Our platform of both consumer and broker facing solutions is helping insurance experts communicate with, learn more about and distribute insurance products to a much broader audience in a faster and more efficient way.
Breathe Life is perfectly poised to accomplish this.
In the last year, we’ve gone from just four founders to over 17 experienced individuals. We have secured significant financial and strategic backing from several angel investors as well as from Diagram, a venture launchpad focused on insurance, financial and health technology, that is backed by Power Financial Corporation, Great-West Lifeco, and IGM Financial. The knowledge and backing from our investor portfolio provides a significant competitive advantage in the insurance industry, and let’s not forget our tech, the most important piece! We have fully built out and launched the first version of our platform and have secured long-term partners who are already seeing results.
So what’s next for Breathe Life?
2019 is going to a huge year for us. Since the very beginning of this venture, we’ve been heads down building, but now it’s time to accelerate our growth. We have ambitious marketing, business development, product, and engineering plans, and although we’ve got a strong team, we’re not done building it!
Guess what? We’re hiring!
We’re always on the hunt for top talent to join us on our mission to power the insurance world with innovative technology. Check out our current job openings here and if you don’t see a role that suits you, but you think you can help us achieve our vision, send your CV and a blurb about yourself to hello@breathelife.com.
We’re Breathe Life, a user-centric set of software solutions that will power the insurance industry of the future.
Ian Jeffrey, Co-Founder & CEO
